She returned to the barn as soon as she had eaten. She was going to change her clothes. She loved clothes Claude had given her, but they clearly upset Logan. She climbed the stairs to the loft. Logan was there, sitting on the windowsill, staring out from the window.
“Finally. We have some work to do. In case you forgot, it’s time for your first lesson,” he grunted.
“I haven’t forgotten. I just change my clothes and…”
“Don’t bother. Downstairs. Now.” He was angry. Marie had never seen him this tense.
Few minutes later it became apparent to her, that Logan was after blood. She had had her share of fights, but usually they had been petty squabbles with other women. She had never gotten against full grown, enraged man.
“Oww…” Logan had been tossing her around on the soft sand floor of the barn. Relatively soft. She was quite sure that her behind was one big bruise.
“Stop whining. You have to learn how to fall,” Logan quipped, grabbed her hand and yanked her back up.
“I can fall just fine on my own, my dear sir…” She muttered. Logan snorted.
“No, you can’t. But you’ll learn.”
“I thought you would teach me how to fence and shoot. Things that are actually useful…”
“You haven’t have a decent fight in your life. We’ll start from the basics. Ready?” Logan asked, and twisted her hand hard before she had the time to answer. Anger flared in her, and instead of falling on her knees as he had intended her to do she gathered all her strength and kneed him to his side. Logan bared his teeth and hissed. Something feral flashed under the hazel surface of his eyes, and he let go of her hand.
“Nice try…” He smirked, spun quickly around and swept her knees with one outstretched hand, falling on top of her when she fell on her back.
“You got in one good hit and stopped. You should have kept going until I was down…” Logan murmured, face just inches from Marie’s. She tried desperately to struggle away from under him. His weight was suffocating. It was hard to breathe.
“I didn’t know this was ‘beat each other senseless’ –lesson…” she wheezed.
“Now you know. Think you can do better if I let you go?” Logan chuckled.
“I promise to try…” Logan rolled easily on his feet, and finally she was able to breathe again. She just lay there for a while, enjoying the feel of cool night air filling her lungs.
“Interesting style. Are you planning to bore your opponents to death?” Logan mocked.
“No…” She pretended to be disoriented, and crawled first on her hands and knees. She had seen more than her fair share of fights during the carnival days, and there was one trick that worked almost every time a fighter decided to use it. It really was laughable. It must have been the oldest trick in the book, and yet nobody ever saw it coming. She grasped a fistful of sand and gathered her feet under her, feigning weak.
“Come on, we can do this all night, or get this over with now and…” Logan didn’t have the time to finish his sentence. Marie let out a scream, sprung to her feet and slung the sand to his face, using his momentarily confusion to barrel head first against him and throw him to the ground on his back. When she tried to follow through and finish him with a well aimed kick, Logan surprised her by rolling over his back and jumping back on his feet with one fluid motion, pulling a small but sharp looking dagger from his sleeve and pressing it to her throat.
“Not fair!”
“Life rarely is…” Logan grunted, sheathing the dagger and rubbing the sand from his eyes. She tried to slug him, but he grabbed her wrist before her fist connected with the side of his face.
“I think we’re done for tonight,” he said.
“Really? But there’s my whole front side left. No bruises there yet…”
“Shouldn’t have bruises anywhere else either. Not yet. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you,” Logan murmured, still holding her hand.
“Was she… She was important to you.”
“Laurel? No. Not more important than any other of my friends. Maybe if thing’s would have been different… She was Leon’s wife. Great hunters, both of them. Up until they got ambushed…” Logan reached for a lock of hair that had escaped from her braid and hung on the side of her face.
“Leon was already dead when I found them. Laurel… I cut off her head and drove a stake through her heart. Claude should have known better than to give her clothes to you. But keep them. Wear them. They suit you well.”
She followed Logan to the loft. No wonder he had reacted so badly upon seeing her in Laurel’s clothes. Woman had been his friend, and he had killed her.
“What about Claude?” She asked.
“What about him?” Logan asked, shrugging off his jacket.
“Where he was when it all happened?”
“There with me. Before she had turned, Laurel had finished Leon, but Claude couldn’t do it to her. At first we thought that we wouldn’t even have to. She looked okay. Then she tried to attack us. Claude got her pinned, but couldn’t kill his own sister…” Logan spoke with tight, clipped tone.
“This is the downside of this job. You most likely won’t die peacefully in your own bed to old age. Either something you hunt tears you to pieces, or your friends have to hunt you down. It’s… It’s a shame, you know… They were talking about quitting… Getting a real family… Kids and everything…” Logan’s voice broke down and he covered his mouth with his palm, eyes watering.
“Hss…” She wrapped her arms around him. For a brief moment Logan stood there stock still, then the dam broke. He hauled her tight against him and hid his face to the side of her neck.
“We were so young… They were too young to die like that…” He managed to gasp before great, heaving sobs robbed him from his ability to speak. He held her so tight she was afraid she would end up with broken ribs, but there was no way she could have asked him to let go now. She guided him carefully to the bed and they sat down, Logan still squeezing her like a lifeline, crying over past events, and lives he couldn’t save back then.
“Oh, hell… I thought I had gotten over it already…” Logan murmured with a thick voice, wiping his red and puffy eyes.
“Got your shirt all wet… Sorry…”
“Don’t worry. Feel any better?” Marie asked.
“No. But at least you know now. It’s not you I was mad at. It’s not your fault. I’m more angry to myself. And Claude. Did he tell you? About how much you remind of her?” Logan asked.
“He told me I could have been Laurel’s twin.”
“Maybe not a twin. But very close relative. When you sat there with Claude, eating and laughing like that… At first I thought… It felt awful. I almost called you by her name, before I realized she is as dead as she was six years ago.”
“It looks like Claude has taken it much better than you,” Marie said.
“He dealt with it with his own way. I buried myself to work. Kept everything locked inside. Not healthy attitude, but I was afraid that if I stopped I would go insane.”
“So you just kept going. Not sleeping, not eating…” Marie started.
“… No stopping, finding new things to hunt…” Logan continued.
“… Until it felt safe to stop. I know what you went through. It happened to me, too. When my father hang himself, I got lost. I spent whole year living like an ant. Working, working, until I was so tired I could sleep without dreaming,” she finished.
“Speaking of which, we should go to sleep, before you get too sore to fell asleep,” Logan said with apologizing tone.
“I don’t have nightgown. And it looks like Laurel didn’t have either…” Marie whispered blushing.
“Is it really that big issue to you? I thought you witches are used to nakedness,” Logan said, giving her a wink.
“Logan!”
“I’ll give you one of my shirts. And promise to wear trousers. Is that okay?”
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